Ribbons and Pearls: The Botan Collection
by Asanisan
Summary: A bunch of non-linear chapters about Botan. They may be from her viewpoint or someone else's, but they're all about Botan and her life as a ferry woman, a friend, and a woman.
1. Cold Burning

**Ribbons and Pearls**

**Cold Burning**

Why did it have to be this way?

Always, always, always.

"I'm sorry…I couldn't…" the samurai gurgled around the blood seeping into his lungs.

"Hush," the girl said beside him, holding his hand. "Y-you'll be fine."

Her voice broke. Their voices always broke.

"I-I love you…so much…" the samurai said as he weakly caressed her face, wiping away the hot, crystalline tears.

"Don't say that now," she pleaded. "Tell me tomorrow."

He smiled as a thin trail of blood trickled from his lips and then down his chin.

"T-te…tell me you…love me…" he breathed, the cloud of white from the cold almost invisible this time.

"I love you!" she wailed helplessly. "I love you so much. If you die, I swear I'll kill myself."

He laughed a little and coughed up more of the thick red life in him. Some of it spattered across her face, turning pink where it touched the tear trails.

"You're not…so stupid…as that…"

"People do stupid things for love. Look at you," she cried with a small, sad smile. "You stupid man. It was pointless to try to save me."

"No…never pointless…if it makes you smile……Be…….happy……."

"Shinji? Shinji?!"

The girl stared a minute at the un-breathing flesh beside her. For a moment, the whole world was silent, un-breathing like the corpse she clung to. Then, her face broke and she screamed as she buried her face into the thing's shoulder. Her wails pierced Botan's heart like nothing else. It was the sound of a heart being torn into tiny pieces no one could put back together. With each sob, each pathetic wail, Botan felt her own heart break bit by little bit. But she was a professional at losing pieces of the heart.

As cold microscopic starflakes started to fall from the sky, frosting everything in that blank white, Botan watched as the samurai's soul shed it corporeal skin. The girl continued to cry, not seeing this semi-transcendental ascension.

'I-is she going to be okay?' the samurai, Shinji she supposed, said with a look so painful, she was amazed his new spirit form didn't bleed for it. Those sobs were tearing his heart apart just as much as the girl's.

For a moment, Botan forgot her job. For a moment, her smile faded and was replaced by blankness. For a moment, her eyes sharpened and a cold fire seeped into them. For a moment, all she could do was stare at this scene from fate's grand play with nothing but the blackest, most bitter hatred and contempt for the wretched worlds fate's toys had to live in. For a moment, she wanted to tear, rip, claw it all into tiny little pieces. And then cry herself into oblivion.

The poor girl in the elegant kimono would do nothing but cry for the rest of her life. It had happened too many times before to miss the signs of it. Botan hoped the girl's life was short. Hopefully she lacked common sense and would stay beside that lifeless flesh all night. The snow lay melted around the still warm corpse (not cold yet, but fading fast, just give it time) but the rest of the world was cold and ice. She would die of hypothermia.

'She should go in. It's cold,' Shinji said. 'She shouldn't sit in my blood like that either. Blood was never her color. She looks best in springs.'

The voice of another soul was enough to send that cold fire back to its hearth. Botan was back on the job, a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye. The hardest part was always that damned cursed twinkle.

'Good evening, Takara Shinji,' she said with a bubbly giggle. 'Welcome to the afterlife. My name's Botan, and I'll be your grim reaper this evening.'


	2. What's it like?

**Ribbons and Pearls**

"**What's it like?"**

The first time Hinageshi met Botan, she was tripped over. It was really quite funny. It had all of Reikai laughing for nearly a week straight. To this day, people joke about letting her into the file rooms.

You see, back then Hinageshi was working on her apprenticeship as a ferry girl. She was to do everything her senpai told her. This including running errands. Lots of errands. So many errands, she was sure she could run twenty miles in the snow without losing breath. Well, maybe not twenty miles, but that's not the point. The point was that it was all Ajisai-senpai's fault! The ferry girl had purposefully forgot her handbag in the filing room offices and had ordered Hinageshi to retrieve it.

Now, we all remember that Hinageshi is small. Hinageshi is a little clumsy. Hinageshi has trouble being seen by others carrying meter high stacks of paperwork. So, since we all remember these things about Hinageshi, it was a very cruel thing to send her to a place where they carry two-meter high stacks of paperwork and no one watches to see if anyone is underfoot.

So, it was really no surprise that the girl carrying a three-meter high stack of paperwork would trip over little, clumsy Hinageshi.

Oh, it was horrible! Hundreds upon thousands of previously beautifully correlated paperwork was sent flying hither and thither, making the most terrible fluttering noised that sounded a lot like doom incarnate. And how the poor girl that tripped over Hinageshi's loathsome self yelled! Hinageshi was sure that the moment she opened her eyes from her own position on the floor she would see broken bones and blood.

When the paperwork settled, the yelling stopped, and Hinageshi finally found the courage to open her eyes, she about had a coronary.

Oh, no! Oh, no, no, no, no, no! It was Botan-sama! THE Botan-sama! The top ferry girl who was too good for lowly apprentices like herself to even dream about talking to had just tripped over Hinageshi's despised self! And all the other ferry girls and oni around them were laughing their heads off. Oh, she was so stupid. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

"Are you alright?" the blue haired vision had asked her in the sweetest of tones, not even noticing the mirth swirling around her ears.

And the guilt doubled at those caring words. Tears started falling from her eyes all by themselves. She bowed her all the way to the floor.

"Gomen nasai! Gomen nasai! Please forgive me, Botan-sama! Gomen nasai…"

"Oh, dear! Please don't cry! It's alright!" the ferry woman cajoled frantically. "I'm not hurt. And the paperwork isn't due until next week. Oh, please don't cry. Um…look, it's a kitty!"

Hinageshi had looked up from the floor then in confusion. Reikai cats were very large and no one called them kitties. But, what she saw dried her tears instantly and had her laughing her head off. Botan had her face in an obscenely accurate impression of a grinning cat. The great Botan-sama looking like a cute little cat! It was just too strange that she had to laugh.

"Ah," Botan sighed. "That's better. Laughing is so much more pleasant on the ears. Well, up we get. Help me pick these up, please?"

Hinageshi wiped the tears from her eyes and nodded, instantly scooping up the mountain of papers not to her, still feeling wary around such a great person as Botan-sama, but understanding that the top ferry woman of Reikai was very kind indeed.

Once all the papers were picked up, Hinageshi carrying only a third of the total amount (they were just too heavy all stacked like that), Botan smiled and said something that almost made her drop the papers she had worked so hard to pick up.

"Thank you very much. If you're not to busy, could you help me carry them to my office."

It was a ferry girl apprentice's wet dream to be invited to Botan's office.

"Of course! I mean…Ajisai-senpai told me to fetch her handbag, Botan-sama," Hinageshi said unwillingly.

"Ajisai-chan? Well, that makes sense. I wondered who would send you into the file rooms. Tell you what. I'll have a talk with her and you can come be my apprentice for the week. You can help me sort out these files again. What do you say?"

The tears almost started again.

"Oh, please don't cry. Don't cry! Do you want me to do the kitty face again?" Botan asked, nervous and frantic.

"N-no. I'm fine," Hinageshi said, sucking up the tears for Botan's sake.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Well, if you're sure. Okay, then. Um…my office is this way."

It was smaller than Hinageshi had expected. It was the same size as Ajisai's office, actually. Except, Botan's office felt different. It was like you could feel the warmth and acceptance and kindness in that room. It felt a lot like coming home. It wasn't until years later that Hinageshi would realize that it was Botan herself what felt like coming.

"Where should I put these, Botan-sama?" Hinageshi asked, finding little space left on the desk or the two chairs in front of the desk. Both were piled high with more paperwork.

"Over here," Botan said, placing her own stack next to the wall and sitting in the wide empty space in front of the massy desk and chairs. "I always work on the floor. There's more room that way."

And there was room. A lot of room. Both Botan and Hinageshi had room to spread themselves out comfortably and still get their work done. Hinageshi never would have realized the floor was the most efficient place to get things done. It was only one of the many things Botan would teach Hinageshi.

--

It had been two weeks since Hinageshi had become Botan's apprentice. It was Botan's paperwork day, so she had been in the office all morning. It was nice. Usually, Hinageshi only got to see Botan when she stopped in from ferrying souls, but on paperwork days, the two of them would spend the whole day chatting while they did their work. Hinageshi always felt very blessed and very selfish to spend so much time with Botan, whose attention was coveted by every ferry girl and oni she knew, but she cherished these days too much to say or do anything to change it.

By now, Hinageshi was comfortable enough with Botan to ask her what she had never dared ask Ajisai-senpai. So, when they were on their lunch break and happily swinging their legs off the side of Botan's office's balcony, she had asked.

"Botan-sama, what's it like to be a ferry girl?"

Botan finished munching on her bite of sandwich and looked up thoughtfully at the multi-colored clouds in the sky.

"Well, it's very sad," the blue-haired goddess said with a pretty smile.

"Sad?" Hinageshi asked with a frown.

"Yes. When you first become a ferry girl, you'll spend your first hundred years or so crying, usually in a place no one can see you. Everyone'll know you've been crying though, but there's no need to worry. Everyone here is very kind and understanding and will pretend like they don't know the difference. Then, you'll probably go on a month-long sabbatical to figure out if you're really cut out to be a ferry girl. When you figure out that there's no other job for you, you'll come back and start ferrying souls again. You'll still be crying, but it won't be as often and you'll probably never let another tear fall. And you pray to everything you know that the only people you'll ever love are the ferry girls and the oni around. And you pray twice as hard that you never fall in love."

"Really?" she asked, astounded. "Why?"

"Because they'll eventually die," Botan said with a sad smile. "That's the tricky thing about being death, you see. You can't grow old and die with the ones you love."

"So ferry girls aren't supposed to love?" she asked in confusion.

"That's right."

"But what about, Ajisai-senpai. She's in love."

"Un, that's because Ajisai-chan was lucky."

"What do you mean, Botan-sama?"

"She fell in love with someone who won't die. She was very lucky."

It almost broke Hinageshi's heart the way Botan said that last sentence, soft like the most loving caress, but full of the saddest whispers of goodbyes. The Botan eyes dimmed and went hollow, Hinageshi knew Botan was crying in the way only ferry girls could cry. That was why she stupidly asked her next question.

"Have you ever been in love, Botan-sama?"

She winced when Botan flinched, but then the ferry woman smiled and chuckled at the lowly apprentice.

"Well, I'm a special case," Botan said lightly, taking another bite of her sandwich.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I've always known ferrying souls was the only job for me. I didn't start of human like most ferry girls, but when I started this job, I was looking to get my humanity back. I did that and more. And while it hurts like hell, I've loved many times over. That also means I've lost many times over, you understand. Of course, I've never loved anyone the way Ajisai-chan and Hakuto love each other, mind you. But I cherish the moments I've had with the people I love. I know there'll be many in the future, and I can't wait. It's what keeps me going. Most people can't understand how I do it. Neither do I most of the time. It really hurts like hell. But all my vacation time is spent in the most fun ways and just spending time with the people I love. Every time I think back to those times, I'm always happy. That's enough for me. What? Don't look at me like that. It's creepy."

Botan was just the most amazing person!

"I want to be just like you, Botan-sama!"

Botan giggled at that and slung an arm around Hinageshi's shoulders.

"We'll see. I think Hinageshi is better as herself. Just remember that if you ever need any help, just call me, okay."

"Okay!"

--

Botan had been right. After she became a ferry girl and joined the same ranks as her beloved Botan-sama, Hinageshi had spent her first hundred years crying. No one seemed to notice, which Hinageshi appreciated to the very core of her being. She was certainly strong enough to handle her own sorrows. She did ask for a sabbatical, but it wasn't because she doubted that she cut out to be a ferry girl. She went to Ningenkai to hone her skills, to take the next step on the ladder to the heights where Botan-sama always stayed waving down at her. It didn't work out the way she had planned and she had moonlighted ferrying souls and had even helped Botan's newest loved ones save the world from being swallow by the Netherworld, a subject which had been her apprentice's thesis and was now part of her expertise. She never did fall in love, but then, her heart was probably too full of Botan to notice if she had. Even if she was always crying, in that special way that ferry girls cried without shedding a tear, she could always think about Botan and smile.

All in all, Hinageshi turned out to be a fine ferry girl.


	3. Inconsistencies

**Ribbons and Pearls**

**"I'll Never Understand Her"**

Women are capricious. Hiei knows this. It is simply a fact of life. Even Mukuro, who one would think above such unreasonableness, will on a whim change her mind depending on the most absurd and arbitrary conditions. But Hiei had never met a woman as capricious or flighty as the baka onna.

She tells the idiot ningen males who ask her to be theirs that she doesn't want a boyfriend. The next day, she tells Yukina how much she wishes for someone she could spend the rest of her life with.

_"They were cute, but none of them made my heart race," he knew she would say if he asked. "And honestly, who could love Death?"_

She yells at him that he is a lazy, horrible person, yet she defends him when the idiot Kuwabara calls him into question.

_"He's a very good person under all that cold and cynical attitude," she had said on a number of occasions. "And he's probably the most loyal and honorable person you'll ever meet."_

She quivers in fear at the thought of his wrath, but she glares at him in challenge if he tries to frighten her face to face, and even then she will only stand up for herself if there are no witnesses, which is stupid because that is when she should be most afraid. Occasionally, she will face him unflinching in front of Kurama, but only occasionally.

_"He threatens to kill me, but he never would. He's got a lot of pride, so I try not to force him to lose face by not following through when the threats have no effect. Pride is very important to youkai and to a man, Yusuke," she had said once._

She happily flies that stupid oar of hers out in the rain, but she will not walk anywhere in the rain without an umbrella.

_"When you fly, you're part of the rain, but when you walk, it's like the sky is crying on you," he heard in her thoughts one day._

She loves cats, but refuses to have anything to do with kittens, even though she says she wants one very badly.

_"I can't take care of a kitten!" she told the oaf when he offered her one. "I wouldn't have time to love it, or talk to it, or even feed it. They only live about seven years on average anyway. Who wants that heartache again?"_

She buys sweet snow, the pink strawberry flavor, and will leave it sitting in the freezer for months, while she buys vanilla or chocolate sweet snow in those strange cones from the vendor down the street.

_"I wonder if anyone will visit today," she murmured to her houseplants every day. "That strawberry ice cream's been sitting in there forever. I can't eat it by myself."_

She will change her outfit twice a day when she isn't working.

_"Maybe he'll talk to me if I look like this," she told her reflection every time. "Too happy-go-lucky you think?"_

He's never seen her fly the same way home or to work twice in a row.

_"Who wants to see the same sights all the time?" she asked herself absently after each flight decision. "How boring. Besides, maybe I'll catch a glimpse of him. That would be nice."_

He's seen her draw straws to decide what she will do on her days off, and if she didn't like what she chose for whatever reason, she will pick something else as if she knew all along what she wanted to do in the first place.

_"You never know how much you want to do something until you can't do it anymore," she told him once, on one of those rare occasions they were alone and she was holding her own against him. "You should tell Yukina, Hiei. Preferably before you're really dead, you big liar."_

It was simply impossible to pin her down. Capricious to her very core, she made absolutely no sense to him.

"Botan-san! Please help!" her next door neighbor yells while banging on her door, a view he can see quite well from the sinfully comfortable tree in her front yard. (He would never forgive that tree for growing so close to her dwelling.)

The door opens immediately, the baka onna having dropped whatever she was doing to help the poor, unfortunate soul outside her door.

"What is it, Hina-chan?"

"It's my puppy! I can't find him anywhere! He's not in the house and the window was left open! I don't know what to do!"

"Calm down, Hina-chan," the blue-haired woman says calmly. "He can't have gone far. He's probably out in the yard somewhere or wandered over to someone else's apartment. You start knocking on doors and I'll search the yard, okay? What does he look like?"

"He's black, with big blue eyes, and the cutest nose and…and I just have to find him!"

"Okay, okay, we'll find him," Botan says soothingly to avoid the tears in the other woman's eyes from spilling over. "But we have to start looking first, right?"

"Right," the other woman sniffs.

"Then lets get started."

The two split up and Hiei watches while the neighbor turns the corner to start knocking on doors and Botan starts to call for the puppy and look through the thick foliage in her yard.

He searches with his cursed eye and sees that the stupid dog has somehow made it to the roof. Just as he locates it, the puppy lets out a bark and alerts Botan to its whereabouts.

"How did you get up there, silly-billy?" she asks the puppy in a sickeningly sweet tone while she makes for the stairs.

She reaches the roof, but the stupid pup has climbed up onto the ledge and keeps backing away from the baka onna. It reaches the edge just when she is close enough to touch it, all the while trying to calm it down by whispering sweet nothings to it. It refuses to be calm and eventually slips off the two-story roof. The baka onna jumps after it.

She catches the puppy mid-flight and turns in the air so that she will bear the brunt of the impact. This means that Hiei catches her bridal style. The three of them hit the ground with the slightest jolt, a meter and a half from the place that would have surely been the baka onna's grave.

She holds her eyes tightly shut still, the puppy securely in her arms and struggling to get free.

"Baka onna," he growls at her.

She opens her eye just the slightest sliver and then they are thrown wide as she stares at him in astonishment.

"Hiei?"

He drops her to the ground, the puppy getting free and turning the same corner its master went just minutes ago. The onna lets out a groan and glares up at him.

"What did you do that for?"

"You're an idiot. Are you seriously willing to die for a dog?" he asks tersely and condescendingly.

"I wouldn't have died," she says with a frowning pout. "It just would have hurt a lot. Hina loves that dog so much, I couldn't just let it die!"

He doesn't say anything, just glares at her. She gets nervous and starts to fidget at his feet.

"Sorry for making you save me again. Thank you," she says quietly, fiddling with her fingers.

"I didn't do it for you," he tells her, turning his back on her. "Yukina would be upset if you died."

He disappears to his favorite tree quickly, just in time to see her smile fondly at the place he had been standing just moments ago. It makes him blush.

She quickly picks herself up, rubbing the spot where she had hit the ground when he dropped her, and follows the puppy to find her neighbor.

The baka onna would do anything for someone who she considered a friend. She may have been the most capricious person he had ever met, but she was also the most loyal.

_"You may think we're really random, but we have our own type of honor code, what we call our principles. Never forget that a woman always has her reasons, Yusuke," she said once, with a warm and welcoming smile. "And here's a hint, since you look so totally lost. If you're precious to her, she'd rather die than let you down."_

--

**Author's Note:**

This is more along the lines of my personal ship, but I had nowhere else to put it. I apologize. The title of this chapter gave me trouble. How well does it fit?


End file.
